Author: Dr. Lea Stirling
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Keywords: taste, antique, gaul, classical, statuettes, collector, mythological, learned
Number of Pages: 336
Published: 2005-01-26
List price: $90.00
ISBN-10: 0472114336
ISBN-13: 9780472114337

Inspired by a classical education, wealthy Romans populated the glittering interiors of their villas and homes with marble statuettes of ancestors, emperors, gods, and mythological figures. In The Learned Collector, Lea M. Stirling shows how the literary education received by all aristocrats, pagan and Christian alike, was fundamental in shaping their artistic taste while demonstrating how that taste was considered an important marker of status. Surveying collections across the empire, Stirling examines different ways that sculptural collections expressed not only the wealth but the identity o